Not just impotent, but deliberately hidden. God can't intervene, for fear of giving too many people good evidence to believe in him.
Correct. Here on earth, we are prevented from seeing Him so that we can be tested. Which raises the question of how did the 1/3 of the host of heaven who followed Satan in the pre-existence get tested fairly with God present and intervening?
They were just so, so evil. They couldn't bear coming to earth to see the horrific sight of a Crumbl Cookie store, or green jello, or the beige carpet covered walls of a stake center.
Joking aside, I have a very hard time imagining that some soul would rather spend his life in hell than trade places with Dan Peterson. That they would reject sailing on an all-you-can-eat buffet cruise for eternity. But you have to create an "other" when you're pitching your religion, even if that other doesn't make logical sense.
It can't be a good moral person rejecting the offer to give Dallin H Oaks 10% of your income for the rest of your life. It has to be some evil corruption in your spirit leading you away from the con artists...
Mormonism solves the problem of theodicy by worshiping an impotent God.
Do you really think the LDS god is impotent? It's been a long time, so I'm fuzzy on what the actual doctrine says. I recall that Smith said that God could not create elements. What other limitations are contained in the scriptures or words of leaders?
he/him we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.
Mormonism solves the problem of theodicy by worshiping an impotent God.
Do you really think the LDS god is impotent? It's been a long time, so I'm fuzzy on what the actual doctrine says. I recall that Smith said that God could not create elements. What other limitations are contained in the scriptures or words of leaders?
In Mormonism, God participates with humans in a Universe He did not create and according to rules He did not make.
God cannot create or destroy matter.
God did not create our intelligences/spirits which are co-eternal with Him.
Human males can wield the same power God has (the priesthood) and can constrain Him with it.
And, divinization is still a thing in Mormonism. "You get a world and I get a world and everybody gets a world..."
Compare that God with one on whom everything depends and whose will controls everything.
MG has embraced a new god who doesn't know everything. This allows for possibility that we have "free will". It also allows for God to have free will. According to the Book of Mormon, it's possible for God to sin and "cease to be God." God doesn't know if he'll always be God. He must consciously choose to be good. We'd probably say as Mormons, that this is only hypothetical, he won't ever choose to be bad. We just have to allow the possibility so that we can preserve moral agency on paper.
But according to MG's definition of free will, God's moral agency is smoke and mirrors.
MG has been clear that people with a greater range of options and choices have more free will. This is only superficially true. A concert violinist can make choices that MG and I can't make. But consider that the whole point of practicing violin is to rid yourself of as much free will as possible. When you're practicing all those complex runs, you're programing yourself, such that when halfway through a run, you have less free will to change course than you did ten minutes before, when selecting the piece to be played. An Olympic pole vaulter has less free choice after stabbing the pole into the ground than ten seconds before sprinting, while thinking about wind and the crowd and all the factors to be compensated for. The hope is muscle memory takes over and everything works out according to all practiced contingencies.
Keeping the commandments is no different. No church leader has ever taught that we should go into that bar or smell that coffee in hopes to be tempted so that we can say we had the most freedom of choice to do otherwise -- we almost sinned but free choice won out. Church leaders tell us to beat temptation basically through forming good habits - once "muscle memory" takes over, there is no real temptation. And so in both the case of achieving great things -- whether it's learning hard math or playing an instrument -- and avoiding the enticements of Fentanyl and Tranq, the point is to train yourself as much as possible so that success is second nature. Normal positive habits keep most of us away from Fentanyl, but if it gets slipped into the sacrament water one Sunday, all bets are off.
As God with his physical body is busy creating the best possible outcomes for the universe, he's not quite God yet if he's still practicing and making mistakes. And so by the time he's God, it's all muscle memory, and there's no more free will. With a resurrected body that doesn't have our imperfections, God will only play precisely those notes he sets out to play. As he masters all disciplines, the "self" spends more time kicking back and enjoying the ride of muscle memory playing out. The greater God is, the fewer options he has, as nothing is a temptation and he's mastered all the positive disciplines.
If you were a God believer, what kind of God would you feel comfortable believing in while at the same time recognizing the world for what it is?
It’s kind of fun to deconstruct a God that seemingly doesn’t perform or operate in ways that either don’t meet certain expectations or conform to a reality that you would like to imagine.
So who or what would your God be, allowing for the realities and verities of the world in which we find ourselves?
The world is what it is. So what IS God? If you were to believe.
Interesting, Dean Robbers. One question: Does the Book of Mormon really say that God can sin? I’m guessing you’re referring to this passage from Alma:
22 But there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God.
23 But God ceaseth not to be God, and mercy claimeth the penitent, and mercy cometh because of the atonement; and the atonement bringeth to pass the resurrection of the dead; and the resurrection of the dead bringeth back men into the presence of God; and thus they are restored into his presence, to be judged according to their works, according to the law and justice.
I read this as a reductio ad absurdum argument: if there were no repentance, that would mean that God would cease to be God. But that would be absurd because God does not cease to be God. Therefore, there must be repentance.
When I asked LDS bot if God could sin, it stated without reservation that LDS God is omnipotent and omniscient. But that’s a problem for free agency. If God knew I that if I were born to my parents, that I would be raised LDS but leave the church at age 19, why didn’t God send me to earth at a different place or time? It’s God who has the free agency — not me.
MG’s solution is to change the nature of God. I don’t know how LDS God feels about that.
If God were to place everyone in an optimum world in which their choices didn’t have real meaning and always led to ‘correct’ outcomes, what kind of a world would that be?
Not just on an individual level but on a global level. If God was to make the one exception for you (placement for optimal outcome) what does that look like if done wide scale?
Changing the nature of God is very Mormon, though.
Well, that's kind of the zeitgeist of the historical period in which it was formed. Did you go the temple pre-1990? If so, you may remember a description of the God that Mormonism rejected. It was, in part, to take a God that could not be comprehended and make him more understandable. I suspect that, in the eyes of the early Mormons, they were rejecting what they saw as mumbo jumbo and replacing it with a God that made sense.
Not just impotent, but deliberately hidden. God can't intervene, for fear of giving too many people good evidence to believe in him.
Correct. Here on earth, we are prevented from seeing Him so that we can be tested. Which raises the question of how did the 1/3 of the host of heaven who followed Satan in the pre-existence get tested fairly with God present and intervening?
Good question. Free will does bring up some interesting conundrums. Above my pay grade, to be sure.
